Some time during the Easter Term of my last Cambridge year (1922) I happened to be consulted, "as a Russian," on certain niceties of make-up in an English version of Gogol's Inspector which the Glowworm Group, directed by Ivor Black, a fine amateur actor, intended to stage... Ivor Black wanted Gogol's Town Mayor to wear a dressing gown because "wasn't it merely the old rascal's nightmare and didn't Revizor, its Russian title, actually come from the French for 'dream,' rêve?" (LATH, Part One, 1)

В беседе с сотрудником нашей газеты* М. А. Чехов сказал, что трактует Хлестакова как «сон», приснившийся городничему.

According to Mikhail Chekhov (a leading actor of the Moscow Art Theatre who played Khlestakov in his own stage version of "The Inspector"), Khlestakov is but a dream of the Town Mayor.

Among the characters of LATH is the poet Audace, an American version of Hodasevich. Audace is one of the guests at the party given by the Kings:

We were now sitting at a round clockfaced table (practically undistinguishable from the one in the Opal Room of my house, west of the albino Stein), Louise at twelve o'clock, Professor King at two, Mrs. Morgain at four, Mrs. King in green silk at eight, Audace at ten, and I at six, presumably, or a minute past, because Louise was not quite opposite, or maybe she had pushed her chair a sixty-second space closer to Audace although she had sworn to me on the Social Register as well as on a Who's Who that he had never made that pass at her somehow suggested by his magnificent little poem in the Artisan.

Speaking of, ah, yesternights,
I had you, dear, within earshot
of that party downstairs,
on the broad bed of my host
piled with the coats of your guests,
old macks, mock minks,
one striped scarf (mine),
a former flame's furs
(more rabbit than flipperling),
yea, a mountain of winters,
like that upon which flunkeys sprawl
in the vestibule of the Opera,
Canto One of Onegin,
where under the chandeliers
of a full house, you, dear,
should have been the dancer
flying, like fluff, in a decor
of poplars and fountains.

I started to speak in the high, clear, insolent voice (taught me by Ivor on the beach of Cannice) by which I instilled the fear of Phoebus when inaugurating a recalcitrant seminar in my first years of teaching at Quirn: "What I plan to discuss is the curious case of a close friend of mine whom I shall call--"
Mrs. Morgain set down her glass of whisky and leaned toward me confidentially: "You know I met little Iris Black in London, around 1919, I guess. Her father was a business friend of my father, the Ambassador. I was a starry-eyed American gal. She was a fantastic beauty and most sophisticated. I remember how thrilled I was later to learn that she had gone and married a Russian Prince!" (Part Four, 4)

Ivor Black's sister, Iris Black is the first wife of Vadim Vadimovich, the narrator and main harlequin in LATH. Iris means "the contractile, circular diaphragm forming the colored portion of the eye and containing a circular opening, the pupil, in its center." In a poem written on April 23-24, 1922, Hodasevich speaks of the wonderful world reflected in his sweetheart's dilated pupil:

Покрова Майи потаенной
Не приподнять моей руке,
Но чуден мир, отображенный
В твоём расширенном зрачке.

Там в непостижном сочетаньи
Любовь и улица даны:
Огня эфирного пыланье
И просто - таянье весны.

Там светлый космос возникает
Под зыбким пологом ресниц.
Он кружится и расцветает
Звездой велосипедных спиц.

As I pointed out before, in his memoir essay Literaturnyi vecher u Pletnyova ("A Literary Evening at Pletnyov's) Turgenev mentions arlekinskie zrachki (the harlequin irises) of one of the guests. It was at Pletnyov's literary soirée that Turgenev met Pushkin (who had less than a month of life). Pushkin's Eugene Onegin is dedicated to Pletnyov. In his poem K byustu zavoevatelya (To the Bust of the Conqueror, 1829) Pushkin calls the late tsar Alexander I "an harlequin in face and in life":

Напрасно видишь тут ошибку:
Рука искусства навела
На мрамор этих уст улыбку,
А гнев на хладный лоск чела.
Недаром лик сей двуязычен.
Таков и был сей властелин:
К противочувствиям привычен,
В лице и в жизни арлекин.

In vain, you’re seeking errors here:
The hand of art has camouflaged
The marble of lips with a smile, smeared,
Ice of a brow - with a rage…
In fact, this image is two-faced.
The same was and that mighty king:
Used to his soul’s controversies,
A face and life – of Harlequin.